Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Mostly anonymous Trump-bots called out, silence when it comes from the Left.
My point here is not to minimize what happened to Weisman at the hands of the alt-right. The truth is that for the most part we don’t know who the alt-right are who attacked Weisman. What we do know is that ugly anti-Semitic tropes have made their way to the mainstream. During last year’s legislative battle over the Iran nuclear deal there was plenty of anti-Semitic trolling going on, and it wasn’t coming from Trump supporters:
Here’s how Tablet Magazine put it:What we increasingly can’t stomach—and feel obliged to speak out about right now—is the use of Jew-baiting and other blatant and retrograde forms of racial and ethnic prejudice as tools to sell a political deal, or to smear those who oppose it. Accusing Sen. Schumer of loyalty to a foreign government is bigotry, pure and simple. Accusing senators and congressmen whose misgivings about the Iran deal are shared by a majority of the U.S. electorate of being agents of a foreign power, or of selling their votes to shadowy lobbyists, or of acting contrary to the best interests of the United States is the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South.This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the president of the United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.
There has been an increasing acceptability towards using anti-Semitic tropes in political discourse. We really saw an increase in it last year in the battle to get support for the deal to legitimize the illicit nuclear program of a regime founded on anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.Having read Weisman’s column there’s an air of unreality to his seeming discovery of online trolls who spout anti-Semitism at those they disagree with politically. Of course there were the reactions to the nuclear deal with Iran last year, which Weisman and the Times had a hand in perpetuating.

Since the creation of Israel, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have been the mainstay of anti-Zionism, with the Left, from the Soviet Union to professors of literature, their auxiliary. But this might be in process of change: as Muslims slowly, grudgingly, and unevenly come to accept the Jewish state as a reality, the Left is becoming increasingly vociferous and obsessive in its rejection of Israel.
Much evidence points in this direction: Polls in the Middle East find cracks in the opposition to Israel while a major American survey for the first time shows liberal Democrats to be more anti-Israel than pro-Israel. The Saudi and Egyptian governments have real security relations with Israel while a figure like (the Jewish) Bernie Sanders declares that “to the degree that [Israelis] want us to have a positive relationship, I think they’re going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians.”
But I should like to focus on a small illustrative example from a United Nations institution: The World Health Organization churned out report A69/B/CONF./1 on May 24 with the enticing title, “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan: Draft decision proposed by the delegation of Kuwait, on behalf of the Arab Group, and Palestine.”The three-page document calls for “a field assessment conducted by the World Health Organization,” with special focus on such topics as “incidents of delay or denial of ambulance service” and “access to adequate health services on the part of Palestinian prisoners.” Of course, the entire document singles out Israel as a denier of unimpeded access to health care.
This ranks as a special absurdity given the WHO’s hiring a consultant in next-door Syria who is connected to the very pinnacle of the Assad regime, even as it perpetrates atrocities estimated at a half million dead and 12 million displaced (out of a total pre-war population of 22 million). Conversely, both the wife and brother-in-law of Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, whose status and wealth assures them treatment anywhere in the world, chose to be treated in Israeli hospitals, as did the sister, daughter, and grand-daughter of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Israel’s sworn enemy.

An estimated 80,228 guests stayed in West Bank hotels in the first quarter of 2016, marking a drop by 32% from the previous quarter and 20% lower than in the first quarter of 2015, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said Monday.

It said 33% of the hotel patrons were from European Union countries and 13% were Palestinian.

The PCBS said room occupancy rate was 16.5% in the first quarter - 25% lower than in the previous quarter and 17% lower than in the first quarter of 2015.

Nobody really talks about the financial hit that comes with each new terror spree but it is pretty obvious that European tourists are going to be less likely to visit the West Bank when its residents are cheering civilians being stabbed and run over by cars.

The last people to ever mention this would be the cheerleaders for terror who pretend that they are "pro-Palestinian."

In Israel, the number of hotel rooms rented in the first quarter was slightly higher than the year before, but still significantly down from 2014 before the Gaza war.

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After my articles about the Guggenheim Museum's blog post that was filled with lies and half-truths about Israel, and its hypocrisy at claiming Israel is engaging in censorship of art while it is building a museum in Abu Dhabi which explicitly does censor art, the Algemeiner asked the museum for a statement.

In response to The Algemeiner’s request for clarification as to why the Guggenheim would promote on its website an article demonizing Israel, a spokesman for the museum said, “As an arts institution, the Guggenheim welcomes a multitude of voices and perspectives on topics of interest to the wider artistic and cultural community. The views expressed are those of the writer, a curator who lives and works in Israel, not necessarily those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.”

This is a cop-out. Editors in any medium, whether it is a newspaper or a blog or a museum's website, chooses what content it decides to publish and what to exclude. But in all cases, it is the responsibility of the editors to ensure that the pieces are accurate. In this case, the Guggenheim was completely wrong to publish an article that calls withholding of funds to artists who are free to show their art anywhere to be "censorship."

In the case of the Guggenheim website, there are a number of articles praising Arab art, but none about Arab censorship of art. In fact, very few articles even mention censorship worldwide, let alone use the word in their title. One tangentially mentioned self-censorship in Vietmanese art, for example. Only Israel has an article dedicated to its supposed censorship of art.

If the Guggenheim cared about free expression so much, it would write about censorship in the UAE and how it will inform what kinds of shows they will show there. That is a relevant topic that they wouldn't touch. So much for the "multitude of voices and perspectives" that the museum claims to give its readers.

Meanwhile, as the Algemeiner mentioned, former ADL director Abraham Foxman commented on the Guggenheim:

Foxman told The Algemeiner he was “surprised” that the Guggenheim “would permit itself to be used for such blatant anti-Israel propaganda. This article goes beyond the discussion of art, its political. It’s inappropriate and ill-advised. If the Guggenheim wants to make their website a place to discuss censorship, I can give them a list of 25 countries they should start with and not Israel.”

Foxman said that if the Guggenheim “wants to become a platform to discuss art and censorship, this is legitimate. However, to the best of my knowledge, Tamir’s article seems to be the only one about Israel, which is a blatant distortion on what is happening in Israel.”

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Following Palestinian Media Watch's exposure that the Palestinian Authority general budget funds the PA hate and terror promotion and rewards terrorist prisoners with high salaries, the US, the EU, Norway, and other European donors all stopped giving money to the PA general budget so that their money would not go directly to pay salaries for Palestinian terrorists.This is not true for France. The PA announced last week that France signed agreements to give the PA money for various projects and in addition: "financial aid directly to the public treasury in the amount of 8 million euro."
The PA general budget that France is contributing to pays monthly salaries to terrorists like Hamas bomb maker Abdallah Barghouti, whose bombs murdered 67 people, and Abbas Al-Sayid, who planned two suicide bombings in which 35 were killed, as well as all other Palestinians imprisoned for terror crimes.The French government should note that the PA pays more than $12 million a month in salaries to terrorist prisoners. [Official PA TV, June 11, 2014] Accordingly, France's 8 million euro ($8.9 million) will cover approximately three weeks of terrorists' salaries.
The PA salary payments to terrorists have been documented extensively by PMW since 2011, most recently in the report The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud, which documents that despite having promised international donors that it had ceased rewarding terrorists with salaries, the PA still continues this practice.

MEMRI: Terror Show at a Gaza Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony; Islamic Jihad Leader to Israelis: We Are Not Terrorists, Don’t Force Us to Kill You

The influence of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington remains a subject of intense debate in the United States. However, as uncertainty grows throughout much of the Middle East -- and a geopolitical and economic cold war blossoms between two regional heavyweights -- rulers across the region are increasingly vying for the attention of America’s elected officials.
Few do a better job of covering the comings and goings of Mideast power brokers on Capitol Hill than Al-Monitor’s Congressional Correspondent Julian Pecquet. The Memo reached out to Pecquet this week for his thoughts and insights on Mideast lobbying efforts in the nation’s capital.
RCW: Among other things, Al-Monitor tracks Mideast lobbying on Capitol Hill. Which Mideast country -- or countries -- might surprise the casual American observer for its outsize influence in our nation’s capital?Morocco has to be one of the most interesting cases. The kingdom spends upwards of $3 million a year on more than a half-dozen lobbying and PR firms -- not to mention a seven-figure donation to the Clinton Foundation -- to project a friendly image. Mind you, we’re talking about a relatively poor country that’s still eligible for Millennium Challenge Corporation grants. All of that lobbying is directed at one main goal: obtaining U.S. approval -- or at least tacit acquiescence -- for its exploitation of the disputed Western Sahara, where Sahrawi activists have long demanded a vote on independence. The campaign has been largely successful, with neither the State Department nor Congress in any great rush to upset the apple cart and undermine a longtime Western ally by ushering in a potentially ungovernable new state on its borders.Another player with outsize influence is Jordan, whose King Abdullah II has parlayed the kingdom’s strategic position and his personal popularity with Congress and the executive branch into a $1.275 billion aid package this year, and all without any need for lobbyist middle-men.

Hamas executed three people reportedly by firing squad and hanging this morning, in a move that defied protests from the UN and will likely deepen tensions with the Palestinian government in the West Bank.

The Islamist group, which has controlled the Gaza Strip for more than a decade, said it had executed three alleged murderers at dawn.

The executions were not carried out in public even though Hamas had threatened public killings when it announced the death sentences earlier this month.

Two of the men were shot dead by firing squad while a third, a policeman, was hanged, security sources told Reuters.

The group said earlier this month that it has 13 people on death row and intended to carry out further executions.

While the executions weren't public, they did take place in front of the families of their victims. They had the right to pardon the murderers from execution but refused to do so.

Here is one of the rare cases where human rights groups actually denounced Hamas, mostly because they are against the death penalty altogether and they couldn't find any legal loopholes to let this slide, as both HRW and Amnesty try to do with other cases of Hamas (and Hezbollah) crimes.

So don't be fooled by condemnations of Hamas by these human rights NGOs. They are happy to find isolated cases where they condemn Israel's enemies, so they can claim that they are equal in their criticisms as they issue about 6 anti-Israel reports for every one on Israel's enemies.

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Monday, May 30, 2016

I wasn’t going to write about the ‘nakba’ incident at Wanstead High School. Let down by a society that doesn’t believe in truth, the schoolgirl Leanne Muhammed, aged only 15, has already been weaponised. With the publicity her speech received, I felt sorry for her.The child will become further affected by the hurricane surrounding the speech. It is unlikely she will draw the correct conclusions. Those that have influenced her before today, will ensure that the reasons behind her ‘inability to speak freely’ are understood the way they want them to be. A reinforcement of another antisemitic myth, that secret Jewish control stops people from telling the truth. Nobody will tell Leanne that her speech turned history upside down.
The parents, the community, social media, the school, the teachers, these are the ones that remain responsible for the fact that a child of the UK has been brought up to propagate a myth that divides communities, a myth that spreads hate, a myth that seeks conflict. In our society that nakba myth is fostered and nurtured, as if truth and history are no longer relevant elements that need to be considered.Others have already written on the content of the speech itself. Edgar Davidson wrote on the subject and ‘Brian of London’ also covered the issue. The general consensus seems to be that there is no future for Jews in the UK.I agree with both of them.

This explains Leanne Mohamad's perverse views about 'Palestine' and the 'Zionists'

Based on her retweets, 'Peace loving' Leanne Mohamad gets all her information about 'Palestine' from Hamas supporter Abbas Sarsour, who glories in the murder of 'Zionists'. Above are some screenshots from his twitter feed
The story of schoolgirl Leanne Mohamad's award-winning anti-Israel speech, full of ignorant lies and blood libels, keeps getting more interesting. I don't normally 'do' twitter but I posted about the story there today and got back a torrent of abuse.

1. The health conditions of the Syrian population in the occupied Golan continue to deteriorate markedly as a result of the Israeli occupation and its repressive practices. Syrians refusing an Israeli identity card are unable to obtain medical treatment and primary and secondary health care services are non-existent, because there are no integrated health centres in the occupied Syrian Golan.

2. Syrians held in Israeli occupation prisons also suffer inhumane conditions and are subjected to the most brutal forms of torture and ill-treatment in attempts to extract from them confessions to acts that they did not commit. They are consequently prone to a host of serious illnesses and permanent disabilities, as well as to other life-threatening injuries and diseases.

3. The Israeli occupation authorities continue to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses, causing them to develop diseases and medical conditions that are potentially fatal, as in the case of prisoner Hayil Abu Zaid.

4. We also draw WHO’s attention, on the occasion of the Sixty-ninth World Health Assembly, to the fact that the Israeli occupation authorities continue to bury nuclear waste in over 20 sites and have dumped 1500 barrels of radioactive and toxic materials in secret landfills in the territory of the occupied Syrian Golan. They also persist in planting nuclear mines and radioactive materials on the ceasefire line. These actions are in themselves crimes contrary to all international humanitarian customary law and instruments, constituting in addition a flagrant aggression against the Syrian people living under occupation.

All of this is fiction, of course.

But perhaps the funniest part comes later, where Syria complains to the World Health Organization about Israel saving Syrian lives:

8. The Israeli occupation authorities continue to set up field hospitals providing medical treatment for armed terrorists from Jabhah al-Nusrah and groups associated with it who, pursued by the competent Syrian authorities, flee to the territory of the occupied Syrian Golan. The Israeli occupation authorities then return them to the Syrian Arab Republic so that they can resume their subversive terrorist activities directed against the country’s peaceful citizens and its infrastructure.

There is a long history of people making up stories to WHO about how awful Israel is. Here is what the Albanian representative had to say in 1973:

Mr HYSENAJ (Albania) said that it was well known that the health of the Arab population
of the occupied territories had grown worse as a result of inadequate medical services and
personnel. The very serious economic situation of the Arab population in the area, and its
deprivation of all national, political and social rights, had increased the number of sick
in the population and mortality among children, and had made the future uncertain for them.
The Israeli Zionists, pursuing their aims to create a Greater Israel at the expense of the
Arab countries, was carrying out a policy of mass extermination of the Arab population, by
creating extremely difficult living and housing conditions, turning the people out of their
homes, pillaging, and stepping up arrests, imprisonment, and torture.
The deterioration in the health of the Arab population of the occupied areas was a direct
consequence of the imperialist Israeli aggression of June 1967 against the three Arab States.
As long as that aggression continued, the serious health problem of the Arab population of
those areas would not improve.

The Israelis have got to be the worst practitioners of mass extermination ever. (For those interested, here is a WHO report from Israel on how much Arab health services improved from 1967 to 1980.)

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

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But they are no doubt Zionist shills being tortured into saying these things. Or bribed. Or something. Because the idea that generations of kids are being taught to support killing Jews couldn't possibly have anything to do with their education.

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150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of “unpeopled deserts” and “mounds of barrenness”, of “forlorn” and “untenanted” cities.
Palestine is “desolate”, he concluded. “One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.” The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free, there’s nothing inside for any of the visitors to see except the bare walls.
The Palestinian Museum had been in the works since 1998, but has no exhibits. The museum cost $24 million. All it has to show for it are a few low sloping sandy buildings indistinguishable from the dirt and a “garden” of scraggly bushes and shrubs. The Palestinian Museum is open, but there’s nothing inside.
It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for Palestine than a bunch of empty buildings designed by Irish and Chinese architects whose non-existent exhibits were the brainchild of its former Armenian-American director. It’s as Palestinian as bagels and cream cheese. Or skiing, hot cocoa and fjords.Over the Palestinian Museum flies the proud flag of Palestine, which was originally the flag of the Iraqi-Jordanian Federation before the PLO “borrowed” it, and visitors might be greeted by the Palestinian anthem composed by Greek Communist Mikis Theodorakis. If it sounds anything like the soundtrack from Zorba the Greek, that’s because they both share the same composer.

As the British began to dismantle their Mandate [The British Mandate] and leave western Palestine, Israel's War of Independence began (November 30, 1947‑ May 14, 1948). During the war, Palestinian Arabs became belligerents in the conflict, and by its end, rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state. Six thousand Jews - 1 percent of Israel's Jewish population - lost their lives during the War of Independence.The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade Israel and "save Palestine," marked a watershed event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order to "consolidate defense arrangements" in strategic areas. With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it is no exaggeration to say that the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the balance.
Palestinian Arabs represented one side in the conflict - the side responsible for starting the war.
The new Jewish state found it imperative to eliminate all potential pockets of Arab resistance in key areas if it was to survive. Dislodging all Arab inhabitants from sensitive areas in proximity to Jewish settlements, establishing territorial continuity between blocs under Jewish control, and ensuring control of key transportation arteries were military necessities. As May 14th approached, Israel could not afford to risk a Fifth Column at its rear to add to all other aspects of its militarily inferior situation.
The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared:"The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out."

Ex-Israeli ambassador in the U.S. Yoram Ettinger has compiled a list of sound bites that succinctly explain the background of the "Palestinian refugees."
One of the Palestinian Authority's perpetual demands whenever talk of negotiations with Israel comes up is that the "Palestinian refugees" from 1948 be allowed to return to their former homes inside Israel. Israel has never accepted this demand in any form, because of the obvious consequences of millions of Arabs flooding the country.
Yoram Ettinger, an expert on demographics and Israel-American relations, explains that the PA's demand is totally groundless, on a number of counts. Excerpts from the list are provided here – enough to give an accurate picture of why the "refugees" issue is actually a non-starter:
Since the end of World War II, there have been over 100 million refugees from various countries and conflicts in Europe, Asia and Africa. Nearly all of them have been integrated into their host countries. The main exception is the Palestinian Arab refugees: The Arab countries never accepted any plan, even for good money, to integrate their brother refugees into their countries.In 1952, the United Nations proposed a three-year, $200 million plan to integrate Arab refugees into their host countries. Jordan was the only Arab country to accept it, the plan never got off the ground, and the words of the then-Secretary General never came true: "The refugees will lead an independent life in the countries which shelter them…. The refugees will no longer be maintained by an international organization….”Gen. Alexander Galloway, director of UNRWA in Jordan, said this at a May 25, 1953 hearing of the Near East Senate Subcommittee: “The Arabs states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

More than 2,000 pil­grims gathered at Africa’s oldest syna­gogue on the south­ern Tunisian island of Djerba despite a warning by the Israeli government that the Jewish festival could be targeted by terror­ists.

In an event unique in the Arab world, pilgrims, especially Jews of Tunisian descent from around the world, take part every year in the Lag Ba’omar festival at Djerba’s Ghriba synagogue. Pilgrims pay re­spect at tombs of famous rabbis, make vows, light candles and en­gage in celebrations.

Approximately 1,500 Jews live in Tunisia, down sharply from an esti­mated 100,000 before the country won independence from France in 1956.

“The way Tunisia treats its Jew­ish citizens and all its minorities serves as a strong positive model for the rest of the world,” said Knox Thames, US State Department spe­cial adviser for religious minorities. Thames participated in some parts of the pilgrimage ritual.

The Jewish community of Djerba is said to date back around 2,600 years ago. The Ghriba synagogue was built in 587BC.

The synagogue became the site of an annual pilgrimage of Jews from Tunisia and abroad. Known as the Hiloula, which translates as “cel­ebration”, the event takes place on the holiday of Lag Ba’omer in com­memoration of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, a legal scholar re­puted to have performed miracles.

The event isn't quite unique, because there was another Hiloula festival in Morocco as well for Lag B'Omer. From Morocco World News:

Hundreds of Jewish pilgrims from around the world gathered on Thursday in the city of Ouazzane (north) to celebrate the Hilloula.

On this occasion, a ceremony was organized by the Council of Jewish Communities in Morocco in the mausoleum of rabbi Amrane Ben Diwane and was attended by pilgrims from Morocco and abroad.

The ceremony was held in the presence of several Moroccan officials as well as by civilian and military figures.

Aloun Sami, a member of the Council of Jewish Communities in Morocco, told MAP that the celebration of this annual religious ceremony showcases the attachment of Moroccan Jews to their homeland, where they enjoy full respect.

There is an element of Tunisia and Morocco bending over backwards to show their support for Jews to the West, but that doesn't mean that their efforts are unappreciated. Indeed, those two countries are anomalous in the Arab world as to how they protect their tiny remaining Jewish communities.

A Moroccan news site had a 10-minute feature on these pilgrimages a couple of years ago, where it gathered over 350,000 views with much debate in the comments between those who support Jews and the (much noisier) blatant antisemites.

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The photo of a young Muslim woman called Zakia Belkhiri subtly undermining an anti-Islam demonstration by using the protesters as a backdrop for a selfie was one of the most striking images of the past week. But it's a story with a not so pleasant postscript.

However, since then a series of deeply disturbing anti-Semitic statements made by Ms Belkhiri on social media have come to light.

In one tweet dating from November 2012, she wrote: "Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some. So we know why he was killing them."

And in another Facebook post from March 2014, she used an expletive to describe Jews before adding: "I hate them so much."

Flemish weekly magazine Knack published an article by Dyab Abou Jahjah defending Belkhiri, and he blames her antisemitism on - Israel. After saying that her antisemitic posts happened when she was "only eighteen," Abou-Jahjah then says that she cannot be blamed for conflating Zionists and Jews. After all, he asserts, Zionist Jews are like ISIS and Jews in general are like Muslims in general who consider Israel to be an evil, genocidal regime. He says that Belkhiri is a victim of Israeli propaganda because by calling itself the Jewish state it is just like the Islamists who call ISIL the Islamic State. How can you blame the poor innocent 18-year old for justifying genocide against millions of Jews???

Abou-Jahjah also proudly says "I always use the term 'Zionist' in my criticism and I avoid the word 'Jews', because I am aware of my position as an example to many, and therefore my responsibility to make people aware that it is not an ethnic or religious conflict."

How ethical! In fact, there is a great example of how Jahjah used the word "Zionists" instead of "Jews."

When the mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, decided to call the assistance of the army after the terror attacks in Paris in order to protect the Antwerp Jewish schools, Jahjah called him "a Zionist sucker" ('zionisten-pijper') - essentially a "Zionist asslicker" - for wanting to protect Jewish schoolchildren from being slaughtered.

In an interview, he said that he realized that the term was offensive and he took down the tweet and changed it to "Zionist flunky."

Here's another example of how Abou Jahjah really thinks about Jews, even though he claims in the media to want to live in a binational state where Jews and Arabs are treated equally:

"La valise ou le cerceuil" means that the Jews should be removed from the region via "the suitcase or the pallbearers."

Abou-Jahjah also refers to Hamas as a "glorious resistance movement" and calls Israeli Jews "Zio-Nazis.

Abou Jahjah is an antisemite who thinks that mindlessly changing "Jews" to "Zionists" when he writes for Western media today is how to shield himself from quite warranted criticism that he simply hates Jews.

A Christian Arab-Israeli ballet dancer, Abu Hanna told reporters she is “proud to be an Israeli Arab,” noting, “If I had not been in Israel and had been elsewhere — in Palestine or in any other Arab country — I might have been oppressed or I might have been in prison or murdered.”

(h/t Yoel)

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Sunday, May 29, 2016

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan are planning for a post-Mahmoud Abbas era that would leave his Fatah archrival Mohammed Dahlan in control of the Palestinian presidency, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority, Middle East Eye has learned.

Senior Palestinian and Jordanian sources told MEE separately of the plan. Although there were differences in emphasis - the Jordanian source added caveats about Dahlan’s known weaknesses - they independently corroborated the existence of a joint plan of action.

Abbas has been a dominant figure in Palestinian politics since the 1990s and Palestinian president since 2005.

Dahlan is a former leader of the Palestinian political party Fatah who has been exiled from Gaza and the West Bank and has close ties to the UAE monarchy.

The UAE has already held talks with Israel about the strategy to install Dahlan, and the three parties will inform Saudi Arabia once they reach an agreement on its final shape.

The key objectives of the plan are to:

• unite and bolster Fatah for the forthcoming elections with Hamas
• weaken Hamas by dividing it into competing factions
• conclude a peace agreement with Israel with the backing of Arab states
• seize control of sovereign Palestinian institutions, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), the PLO chairmanship and leadership of Fatah
• choreograph the return of Dahlan as the power behind the throne of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA)

One of the prime movers of the plan is Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, who made clear to Jordan that differences over Palestinian President Abbas affected bilateral relations.

At one point, the Emiratis demanded the arrest of Abbas as well as a ban on him entering Jordan or using Jordan to travel abroad.

“The Emiratis, particularly Mohammed Bin Zayed, absolutely reject Abbas on the personal level, to the extent that they told the Jordanians explicitly that the reason the UAE is negative about Jordan is due to the fact that Jordan did not take a stand against Abbas,” a senior Palestinian source told MEE.

The three Arab countries have enumerated the steps needed to implement this plan and have allotted roles for each actor to play.

This is a fairly long and elaborate article, and it is intriguing, although I would take it with a large grain of salt.

There is no doubt that Dahlan is a wily politician who has a fair following, but since he was exiled his influence has waned. He is also a thug who has not hesitated to use violence against his political enemies when he was in charge of security in Gaza.

It does mention obstacles to Dahlan's triumphant return:

He is considered to be unpopular among Palestinians and is accused of corruption and links to the Israeli security services.

His “zero sum” relationship with Abbas, who sees Dahlan as the main threat to his presidency, is also considered problematic, as is the fact that he works outside of the territory controlled by the PA.

The Jordanians believe the decision by Abbas to replace Yasser Abd Rabbuh as secretary to the PLO executive with Saeb Erekat shows Abbas is aware of the potential for a palace coup, and could work against Jordanian interests in Jerusalem.

It was, however, noted that Dahlan had influence in the Palestinian refugee camps inside Jordan and could constitute “an important card to impose control inside the camps”.

Weighing up the various pros and cons of Dahlan’s offer, Jordan opted to stall, according to the source.

The policy was to continue to enhance contacts with Dahlan and to show interest in embracing Fatah’s reconciliation, but to tell him to wait until after the US presidential elections and to ask for US help in pushing Abbas towards a reconciliation.

I have no idea if Israel supports Dahlan, and it seems like a long shot. Positioning him as an alternative to Hamas when Abbas dies may make a little sense; Hamas leaders are more charismatic than Abbas' heir apparent Saeb Erekat.

The article is detailed enough to make it seem at least a little plausible that such a plan is being hatched, although the chances of it actually being implemented seems very low.

(h/t Yoel)

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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision last week harshly critical of Israel for "Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan" prompted Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid to describe it as antisemitic.In preparation for WHO's publication of the decision, the Palestinian Ministry of Health submitted a report to the international organization. Apart from the usual allegations propagated by various NGOs, the official Palestinian submission also includes the following outrageous charges:• Israel is damaging prisoners' health by "Holding prisoners in polluted areas, such as in the vicinity of the Dimona reactor or near areas in which waste from that reactor has been buried" (page 29).• "In April 2013 the Russian newspaper Pravda accused Israel of injecting a number of Palestinian prisoners who were approaching their release date with cancer-causing viruses. Despite Israel’s rejection of the accusations made by the newspaper, the question remains: is it true that Israel is injecting prisoners with viruses?" (page 29)• A Palestinian doctor contends that the Israeli practice of freezing terrorists' bodies and insistence that they will only be returned to Palestinians if they are buried immediately "makes it impossible to ascertain whether the deceased individual’s organs have been stolen" (page 49).
When it comes to the summer 2014 Operation Protective Edge, the Palestinian Ministry of Health delves into science fiction. This picture on page is accompanied by the following caption: "Photograph taken during the Israeli war on Gaza, 2014":This image, with its primitive Photoshop makeover, was making the rounds in the summer of 2014, and Israellycool exposed it as a hoax at the time. The original picture was published on a blog to illustrate a story on how Israel might attack Iran's nuclear reactors:

Israel and the Palestinians: What the media won't report

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and an expert on Middle East conflicts, discusses what the Palestinian leadership really wants.

"As part of the Zionist movement's cultural infiltration (into American society), it has managed to convince a large part of American public opinion that the two countries share the circumstances of their establishment," Osama Abu Irshaid, the national director of the Chicago-based American Muslims for Palestine organization, stated in a May 18 broadcast on Al-Jazeera. "In fact, there is some truth to it. (In both countries), it was a process of ethnic cleansing."
Abu Irshaid noted the racist term 'American Indian,' and noted both Americans and Jews say they 'discovered' their lands uninhabited before establishing their respective countries.
"(The Zionists) managed to convince the (Americans) of the following: 'We came to two undeveloped countries, and managed to establish two successful states.'," he said. "This is one aspect of infiltrating American consciousness."Abu Irshaid then discussed MEMRI. "The cultural infiltration also includes the Zionist influence in the media," he said. "They have a significant impact on the media, as well as on Hollywood. They have managed to endear Israeli and the Jews upon American public opinion."

The Israel Defense Forces, more than any other organization, represents Israeli society. It is a melting pot that includes soldiers from all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds, men and women, but even this human collage always has something new. For example, Israel's first female Nigerian officer, Lieutenant Toby Cohen, 21, who was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian mother and Israeli father. Her parents and 8-year-old sister live in the town of Kanu in northern Nigeria, while she immigrated to Israel on her own at the age of 17. Cohen serves in the Homefront Command.

In truth, however, it does not really matter how diverse Israel is or how liberal it is, the western-left will always spit poison at it because it is the lone, sole Jewish country. The Arabs learned long ago that whatever hate-filled and false accusations that they fling at the Jews in Israel, those accusations will be eagerly gobbled up by westerners who pride themselves on "social justice" and "anti-racism."

This is particularly true of progressive-left Jews when they believe that the Jews of Israel are illegally occupying Judea. If you start from the position that Jews are "illegally occupying the West Bank" then you have no case. It does not matter if Israelis discover a cure for cancer, send the first lesbian to Mars, or irrigate the entirety of Africa.

If those Jews have stolen Arab land in Judea - as so many diaspora Jews seem to believe - then Israel deserves every bit of contempt so joyously dished out by her Arab-Muslim and progressive-left tormentors. However, if we acknowledge the historical truth that the land from the River to the Sea is the homeland of the Jewish people, and that the Jewish people are the indigenous people of that land - which we are - then the Muslims and their progressive-left friends have no case.

Cognitive War

Those of us who care about the Jewish people and, therefore, about the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel, are engaged, against our will, in a cognitive / propaganda aggression launched by the Arabs since, at least, 1967. They cannot beat the Jews with conventional warfare because - despite the fact that they outnumber us by a factor of 60 or 70 to 1 in the region - they are too weak. This weakness, of course, is not essential, but self-inflicted. If they insist on gazing upon the seventh-century mirage of Muhammad then their culture and abilities will reflect that interest.

If they would, instead, gaze upon Isaac Newton, and all that implies, their chances of slaughtering us would be greatly enhanced.

But since they cannot defeat us militarily they turn to propaganda which they are, in fact, very good at. They may not know much about science or technology, but they definitely know a thing or two about how to turn western-left heads, which they learned, in part, at the feet of their Soviet advisers. The Arabs were told, "Look, you cannot go screaming for blood and demanding that the Jews get pushed into the sea if you expect western sympathies. What you need to do is frame your blood-lust and theocratic hatred toward Jews as a matter of "social justice" and "national liberation" and then you will have the West eating out of your hand."

And that is precisely what they did.

They may not know much about technology, but their propagandists certainly know how to lie and they lie very well.

When some 19 year old Jewish kid at UC Irvine or San Francisco State University holds up a fist and calls for "intifada" in solidarity with his brothers and sisters "of color" he is denying his own indigeneity to the Land of Israel, while quite literally calling for the murder of his Jewish relatives on that land.

The only way that such a kid could do so is because he was steeped in the Big Lie for too many years.

The Big Lie, of course, is that the Land of Israel is Arab land and that the Jews are usurpers.

History, as an academic field of knowledge, tells us otherwise.

Israeli Diversity and Western-Left Hypocrisy

Israel is the most ethnically and ideologically diverse country throughout that entire part of the world and, far and away, the most democratic. This is why western-left contempt for Israel is, itself, heinously contemptible. It reveals, in glaring relief, the enormous hypocrisy of a political movement that claims to stand for social justice and anti-racism, yet does no such thing.

Calls for justice among Democrats and "progressives" (regressives?) are mired in a form of racism that is almost universal among them and, yet, so ephemeral that they cannot perceive it within themselves. Humanitarian racism has run amok within the western-left. They conceive of Arabs and Africans as lesser human beings who, much like children, are not really responsible for their own behavior. Instead it is the fault of the parents and, in the progressive imagination, that means white people.

It is in this way that they turn their own value-system upside-down.

In the name of "resistance against colonialism" they end up supporting the most regressive political movements in the world today. They gladly throw garbage at Israel, but are reluctant to breathe a word against ISIS or Hamas. They have turned the word "Zionist" into an epithet even as they coddle regimes and admire cultures that consign women to the condition of chattel, throw Gay people from tall buildings or hang them from cranes, burn down thousands of Christian churches while persecuting and murdering adherents to that faith and teaching their children that Jews are descendants of orangutans and swine.

And they do this even as Israel welcomes Toby Cohen into the IDF as its first female Nigerian officer.

The progressive-left hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance around Israel is profound.

Just another example of the sterling quality of Haaretz' columnists. From Gideon Levy:

The Oxford Union’s Thursday Debate discusses the Middle East a great deal, certainly more than any Israeli student union does. Just over a week ago, a proposal was raised at this venerable and prestigious student organization that the two-state solution is no longer viable. It wasn’t only the strict dress code (black tie), ceremonial trappings and traditional photograph that were foreign to Israelis – so too was the very fact of debating such a fateful question about Israel’s future.

Unfortunately, a majority of “this House” rejected the proposition, perhaps because most of the members of the union are wealthy, white conservatives and its president is Jewish. The vote is taken at the doors: Those leaving by the right-hand door are for the proposal, those leaving by the left-hand one are against it. (The Ayes were 37 percent, the Nos 63 percent.)

I spoke for the proposition and exited using the right-hand door. Unusually for me, I was in favor of something. But it did not help.

Somehow, Levy assuming that all Jews are Zionist is not considered racist to his progressive audience that consists largely of Jews who are anything but Zionist.

It certainly doesn't occur to Levy that he himself turned the audience against him by spouting out absurd sound-bites that are meant an audience of people who already hate Israel a priori, not for a serious debate (Prop4 is Levy):

Prop4: The state in power now, is one of the most tyrannical, cruel and horrific regimes in the world. This is an Apartheid.

On Friday, I wrote about how the New York Times caved to Israel-haters like Glenn Greenwald, Salon magazine and later Mondoweiss who accused it of "pro-Israel bias" because it put the word "occupation" in scare quotes here:

Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government.

The scare quotes were entirely appropriate, I pointed out, because Gaza cannot be considered occupied by any reasonable interpretation of international law. (I could argue about Judea and Samaria as well, but one has to choose one's battles.)

After I wrote my critique of the NYT's silent removal of the scare quotes, it removed the words "and Gaza" from the article and added a correction:

This is still a cop-out. West and Zogby clearly said that Gaza was occupied as fact, and the New York Times decided that the record should show that they wouldn't say anything like that by calling inclusion of Gaza an "editing error."

Moreover, the Times didn't come close to explaining how fanatically anti-Israel these two are. It mentioned that West considers Netanyahu to be a "war criminal," which is something that New York Times apparently feels is a defensible position. But it didn't mention that West has called President Obama a war criminalas well for US support of Israel, something that most Democrats would not quite agree with and which starkly indicates how extreme Sanders' picks are. (West also said "There is no doubt that Gaza is not just a 'kind of' concentration camp, it is the hood on steroids.")

To say that the New York Times is pro-Israel based on this article is the height of absurdity, but the haters know that when they loudly complain about things that are accurate like the NYT's original reporting, they create an impression in the newsroom that "both sides are against our coverage so we must be doing something right."

(h/t Simon)

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Foxman said that if the Guggenheim “wants to become a platform to discuss art and censorship, this is legitimate. However, to the best of my knowledge, Tamir’s article seems to be the only one about Israel, which is a blatant distortion on what is happening in Israel.”According to pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon, since 2006 the Guggenheim has been attempting to build a museum in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which “routinely engages in real censorship of art. Not the false ‘withholding funds’ definition that idiot artists like Chen Tamir whine about where a government doesn’t want to support someone publicly defecating on their flag, but honest-to Allah censorship of art.”
“When an artist or a museum sees an opportunity for self advancement, suddenly censorship is not so big a deal,” he wrote. “The Guggenheim, by publishing an article about the horrors of nonexistent Israeli censorship, has no problem with partnering with a country where art censorship is normal and explicit. The double standards to which Israel is subject by these supposed defenders of art and freedom of expression is stunning, and their hypocrisy is blatant.”
In response to The Algemeiner’s request for clarification as to why the Guggenheim would promote on its website an article demonizing Israel, a spokesman for the museum said, “As an arts institution, the Guggenheim welcomes a multitude of voices and perspectives on topics of interest to the wider artistic and cultural community. The views expressed are those of the writer, a curator who lives and works in Israel, not necessarily those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.”

What explains this troubling trend? A friend of mine puts it this way: The Left thinks in terms of oppressor and oppressed, and in those terms it’s much easier for them to see the Palestinians as the oppressed than the Israelis, and arguments about who is at fault or who refuses to come to the table don’t change the basic power relations of a powerful, wealthy, successful society facing a weak, poor, failed one. It suggests the Left’s entire oppressor/oppressed framework often is misguided, but that’s just how liberals tend to think.
What’s wrong with this progressive construct is that it is morally offensive and empirically insane. One can sympathize with the suffering of individual Palestinians while also recognizing that Palestinians, not Israel, have brought these miseries upon themselves.
To quickly review the historical record: For those who blame the so-called “Israeli occupation” for Palestinian hostilities, it needs to be pointed out yet again that the PLO, an organization committed to the destruction of Israel, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel controlled the West Bank or Gaza. The entire Palestinian movement, from its inception to this day, is based on vanquishing the Jewish state.This was evident in August 1967 when Israel’s offer to return all the land it had captured during the 1967 war in exchange for peace and normal relations, was rejected out of hand by Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum.
It was evident on the day Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo accords in 1993 when he addressed the Palestinian people and justified his action as the first step “in the 1974 plan,” referring to a phased plan whose goal was the ultimate eradication of Israel.
It was evident at Camp David in 2000, in Taba in 2001, and again in 2008 when enormously generous offers – Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem, the return of the West Bank and Gaza – were rejected by the Palestinians, often followed by an intifada.

Acclaimed director Steven Spielberg admitted he was “wrong” to think as a child that anti-Semitism “was fading,” telling Harvard’s graduating class that President Barack Obama was right when he warned that “anti-Semitism is on the rise.”
Spielberg, whose 99-year-old father Arnold sat in one of the first rows at his address before the Ivy League university’s class of 2016, told the graduates Thursday that the world “is full of monsters” espousing “racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred” and “religious hatred.”
The Oscar winner also offered veiled criticism of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, known for his anti-migrant rhetoric. “We are a nation of immigrants — at least for now,” Spielberg said, and urged the graduates to vote in the upcoming election.
“As a kid, I was bullied — for being Jewish,” Spielberg recalled in his speech. “This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. And we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: ‘We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.’”

While never monolithic, the pro-Israel community has been mostly unified since Israel became independent. That has all changed since the emergence of J Street as a lobby that explicitly set out to challenge the establishment. The group claims it is pro-Israel, but it is fundamentally divisive and philosophically more in tune with the Arab lobby than the pro-Israel lobby.
This was most recently apparent when J Street decided to support President Obama’s catastrophic nuclear deal with Iran despite the opposition of both the Netanyahu government, the opposition Labor Party, and, according to the polls, approximately 80 percent of both the Israeli and American population.
Now we learn that its campaign to mislead Congress and the American public about the Iran deal was paid for by the Ploughshares Fund. Ironically, Ploughshares seeks to eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles and yet supported an agreement that encourages nuclear proliferation. The Fund paid J Street an astounding $576,500 – the equivalent of nearly one-third of the lobby’s entire 2014 budget — to help the Obama administration undermine Israel’s security.
According to deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, the Ploughshares Fund was a key partner in the campaign to recruit nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and “friendly” reporters to create an “echo chamber” to support the Iran deal. J Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami had numerous meetings with White House officials, including Rhodes, and the organization created a website, Iran Deal Facts, to echo the administration’s talking points. Blogger Elder of Zion described J Street succinctly as “nothing but a paid shill for the White House to split the U.S. Jewish community and put it at odds with how Israelis feel.”The Iran case is just one example, however, of J Street’s malevolent influence.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Georges Bensoussan, one of France’s most important scholars of the Holocaust. He told me that “Tariq Ramadan’s request for French nationality is a political provocation of the same nature as that used and abused by the Nazis against the Weimar democracy. It is the Islamist version of Nazi tactics of 1930-1932 years, when Goebbels said that the Weimar Republic had given the Nazis the weapons of its own defeat.”
Tariq Ramadan is Islam’s Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. This Nazi official punctually arrived late at his own rallies: “It increases the tension”, Goebbels said. And to those who reproached him because he used a taxi, Goebbels replied: “You have no idea of what is propaganda. I would have to get two taxis, one for me and one for my bag.”
It was Goebbels’ idea to launch the Nazi appeal to the heart in order to manipulate public opinion. “The art of propaganda” he said, “consists precisely in the ability to solicit the public’s imagination with an appeal to the feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will attract attention and will touch the hearts of the masses of the nation.”
Joseph Goebbels was frail, slender, with a large head and a hollow face, a beautiful voice. People flocked to hear him, because he was able to instill in the public different feelings such as hysteria, hatred, enthusiasm. He knew how to use every means: books and films, radio and music, media and tourism. He conquered writers, philosophers, scientists, intellectuals. “It is nice to exercise power with guns, but wonderful is gaining power over the hearts and the brains,” Goebbels said.This is exactly what Mr. Ramadan and other Islamists are doing today in Europe: the ferocious appeal to the Muslim masses, the manipulation of hatred and emotions through mosques and schools, the conquest of brains and hearts through televisions and rallies.
Dr. Goebbels and Dr. Ramadan also share the same goal: the submission of Europe. Yesterday to the Aryan race, today to Islam.

Who invited this "Salafist megastar," who denies the Holocaust and is known for making anti-Semitic statements, to visit Malmö? What do you do when anti-Semitism in Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, is so normalized that children in a public school can endorse a conference with anti-Semitic elements?
Anti-Semitism is such a gigantic problem in Malmö that even senior city officials cannot understand how it became so normalized. They seem to dismiss it as part of a non-Swedish culture that, in a multicultural society, must be tolerated, even accommodated.
If there are children in Swedish public schools today who are promoting an anti-Semitic conference, what will these children do in the future?Is Sweden really turning into a country where Jews are no longer welcome, someday to become a country without Jews? And if that happens, what does that say about Sweden? And who will come next after the Jews?

French children's magazine Youpi published this in its latest edition. The translation is "We call these 197 countries state...

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

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